


When Life Is an Echo of Death

by hithelleth



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Halloween Bingo-A-Thon, Multi, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:42:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hithelleth/pseuds/hithelleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine <a href="http://nbc-revolution.livejournal.com/127377.html">Halloween bingo-a-thon</a> prompts in one. AU-ish reflection from Bass’ POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Life Is an Echo of Death

**Author's Note:**

> May be slightly spoiler-y for 2 x 06, but I had to get this out before I see it. CM2 if you look really hard. :)

They were all dead at one point, living and breathing, yet dead.

He had witnessed it in the way Miles had led their campaigns, mechanically cold, because that was the only way he could do it.

He had watched it in the haunted look in Rachel’s eyes for years, mistaking it for detachment and cunningness at the time.

He had heard it in the words Charlotte spat at him, her face devoid of emotion.

He had felt it himself more than once: after his family’s death, after Miles had tried to kill him, after he had learned about the mushroom cloud over Philly.

_The guilt for that one thing he hadn’t done overwhelmed him. The night he first heard of what had happened he heated a piece of iron till it glowed with the colour of flames and pressed it over the tattoo on his forearm again and again. His mind hardly registered the pain – even though his body reacted with tears streaming down his face and he bit his bottom lip bloody – as the smell of his own scorching flesh painted pictures of his city burning, collapsing to dust; of men, women, children – for god’s sake, children – melting away in the hell come upon them._

For everything else he had always managed to find excuses, the excuses he had only recently denounced. For this there was none.

Ironically, those who had it done were going to make _him_ pay for it.

 _Caged. About to be put out like an animal. A monster, though not going out like one: the monsters in stories were always defeated by brave knights in shining armours. He had always thought he would go down fighting, but they took that away from him. After all,_ they _were no knights._

It was almost funny that he was about to die now when he felt more alive than in ages.

He was ready, though.

He had no illusions that him dying would make anyone – anyone important, that is: Miles, Rachel, Charlotte – feel more alive.

“I’m sorry,” he told Rachel, as if it mattered.

***

It surprised him every time, the realisation that he was alive.

Sometimes he caught himself wondering over the simplest things, such as a dry leaf the wind carried straight into his palm. He rubbed it softly between his fingers, yet still too hard, crushing it to pieces that scattered on the ground.

Back north the leaves would turn gold and crimson in fall, rustling in the wind and under people’s feet, the images and sounds of childhood which somehow always made him happy.

There were no more red and golden leaves up north now (no trees, no grass, and no laughing children with autumn leaves entangled in their hair), he supposed.

There were none here, either, only dull brown ones, fallen from the short line of trees that had once perhaps marked a road, now the edge of an impassable thicket.

The morbid company as they were they stopped for a break under their thin shade, although only a little away six low mounds of earth and stones overgrown with grass and moss lay, evenly spaced. The last one could not have been more than a few years old, a make-shift cross with a blackened, angular R.I.P. carved into it still standing.

No one talked as they ate and drank from what they had in their supplies, the setting imposing on them the memories of those they had left buried in places none of them would probably ever return to.

Charlotte stared at that old crooked cross, though her eyes were blank as if she were looking at the apparitions no one else could see. However, he could guess fairly well who they were.

When they set off again, she stood still, deliberating, her gaze fixed upon the miserable scene, until he tugged at her elbow at the same time Miles called to her to get moving.

He let out the breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding when she complied, muttering something about impatience, and the wind blowing in their faces swept away the ghosts lingering in her eyes.

***

_The first thing he saw when he came to was her face, far less hostile than usually, almost worried._

_“Charlotte? What… Where… How am I…?”_

_“Not dead?” The warmth of her hand on his withdrawing called his attention to the fact that it was there in the first place as she failed to school her face into one of indifference. “Grandpa made something that made you look dead.”_

_“But... Rachel was…”_ Helping them kill him, not that he minded, _he wanted to say. The door opening interrupted him as if on cue._

_“Believe me, I imagined it was the real thing.” It was only that deceptively weak tone of Rachel’s, the cool blue of her eyes as she shrugged off her statement that convinced him the last thing imaginable had happened._

They were a strange group, a haunted one with half-cracked masks that were now stowed away more often than not, leaving them barren, yet somehow each of them more alive, though broken.

It was like with those decrepit houses they sometimes took shelter in, with leaking roofs and rotten walls and plants growing in the middle of what had used to be a living room, riddled with the past no one could fully discern; but had in their ruin somehow found a new purpose, a new way to live, a new beauty to shine with.

It seemed weirdly okay, this sort-of-family edging around each other, one more tentative around some people than other, careful not to disturb the uneasy alliance in which he and Rachel kept their distance on the opposite poles of the molecule held together by Miles and Charlotte with Aaron as an off-shot free radical.

***

The music carried over from the gypsy camp on the outskirts of a village prompted Bass to take Charlotte’s hand without a thought, twirling her around in an improvised dance, chuckling as she tried to follow the random choice of steps after the initial surprise, spinning her towards Miles, who readily caught her before she could fall.

“We’re supposed to be scouting,” she protested, although not very convincingly.

“Can’t keep up with two old guys?” Miles winked, swaying them left and right before whirling her around into Bass’ arms.

She giggled in response, the happy sound eliciting from Miles a grin which Bass returned over her head while they were dancing under the falling dusk as the moon, painted red, climbed up over the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta’d, so tell me if you see something. Comments are always welcome.


End file.
